ARC ARISE Energy Grant Workshop for Manufacturers

The program pairs morning plenary sessions with concurrent Technology and Education & Workforce Development tracks. Topics include AI in manufacturing, manufacturers’ problems and needs, building ARM Institute-funded project teams, funding opportunities, and enrollment in manufacturing training programs. Interactive activities cover moving ARM-funded projects from development to factory-floor deployment; communicating technology needs, risks, and value in proposals; developing education and workforce grant proposals; and creating immersive learning experiences for manufacturing careers. Other program elements include project updates, five-minute member pitches on organizational capabilities, problems seeking collaborators, and products or services, and an introduction to the revamped ARM Member Community. Attendance is limited to ARM Institute members.

The program brings together energy, industrial transformation, and advanced manufacturing, with cross-cutting themes of workforce development, standards, finance, AI and digital transformation, policy, and resilience planning. Roundtables, workshops, and demos are designed to address tradeoffs involving affordability, risk, standardization, and deployment speed. Program tracks include Powering Growth, with sample sessions on data-center power and cooling, new nuclear deployment, solar cost reduction, and scaling geothermal; Industry Reimagined, covering industrial heat electrification, next-generation steel, and EPC project-delivery costs and risks; Next-Gen Manufacturing, addressing hardware investment and bankability, additive manufacturing, and sustainability tradeoffs in product design; and Future Workforce, on nuclear workforce readiness, apprenticeships, and aligning training programs with real projects. Additional sessions are in development in areas including energy storage, fusion, industrial efficiency, critical minerals, and sustainability tradeoffs. The listed sessions are samples and subject to change.

The program includes keynotes, panels, breakouts, and interactive roundtables on steel-industry conditions; fabrication businesses, leadership, and industry outlook; AI and digitization in manufacturing; shop-floor equipment use cases and return on investment; and manufacturing’s economic and financial outlook. Sessions also address profitability, capital investment, business growth, tariffs, steel, leadership development, recruitment, small- and midsize-manufacturer growth, and potential changes to tax policy, OSHA and EPA regulations, and tariffs. Roundtable topics include culture, marketing, AI, and operations.

A clean energy finance conference for participants across banking, private equity, asset management, project development, manufacturing, and corporate purchasing.

An intensive workshop on projected electricity demand and expanding the supply of natural resources used to generate power. Topics include natural gas, geothermal development and repurposing oil and gas assets; hydrogen, uranium, lithium and critical minerals; and water, environmental, storage, site-selection and regulatory considerations. Program discussions cover grid shortfalls and raw materials for electricity generation, solutions for increasing electricity supply, geothermal, and technology including ORC, sensors and small nuclear reactors. Other sessions address AI prompts for grid and behind-the-meter planning; lithium direct lithium extraction (DLE) and hydrogen technologies; regulatory and legislative factors affecting geothermal, critical minerals, low-carbon energy, grids and data centers; and mining and oil-and-gas intersections, including near-surface imaging and copper for electricity transmission. The program also includes an AI prompt clinic focused on water, the environment, science and regulations.

The conference addresses legal and regulatory challenges for manufacturers, with sessions on tariffs, trade policy, U.S. Customs and Border Protection enforcement, supply chains, labor and employment policy, and generative AI intellectual property issues including training data, copyright, ownership and licensing. Other sessions examine Suncor Energy v. Boulder and Supreme Court decisions affecting manufacturers; coordination of litigation defense with regulatory compliance and enforcement; professional responsibility, ethics and AI governance across legal and manufacturing functions; PFAS regulations and litigation; local-government lawsuits targeting manufacturers and products; and emergency-response practices covering evidence preservation, site control, internal investigations, liability management, stakeholder communications and reputational protection. The program offers CLE-accredited educational content. Registration is reserved for in-house manufacturing counsel.

The program focuses on transmission and power markets, bringing together finance, technology, and utility leaders. Sessions include: • “1920s Vision: Is Grid Planning Ready for the Future?” — transmission planning reforms under Order No. 1920, expansion efforts, implementation results, and where transmission is being built. • “Capacity Markets: Diagnosing a Chronic Condition” — whether current energy and capacity-market constructs can be rehabilitated or require an overhaul. • “Power Struggle: Paying for the Grid of the Future” — funding interregional transmission, grid grants, price-collared compensation structures, the Transmission Facilitation Program, a proposed transmission investment tax credit, and transmission’s capacity value. • “Gridmaxxing: ATTs and the Art of Doing More With What You've Got” — deployment of advanced transmission technologies, implementation barriers, line-loss savings, and resilience benefits. • “Cost Allocation: An Immovable Object Meets an Unstoppable Force” — cost allocation for large loads, jurisdictional disputes, co-location and proximate resources, broader grid expansion, curtailable large load, clean energy, and storage. Named speakers include Laura Rauch of MISO; Aftab Khan of PJM; Suzanne Glatz of Glatz Energy Consulting LLC; Katie Siegner of RMI; David Lapp of the Maryland Office of Peoples Council; Evelyn Robinson of MAREC; Jennie Chen of RAP; Joshua Macey of Yale Law School; Madeline Gould Laughlin of Grid United; Brooke Keene of Southwest Power Pool; Zach Zimmerman of Grid Strategies LLC; Theodore Paradise of CTC Global; Georg Rute of Gridraven; Carla Pinzon of Expand Power Technologies, Inc.; Bryn Baker of CEBA; Jeff Bladen of Verrus; Matt Christiansen of Wilson Sonsini; Morgan Sipple of the Data Center Coalition; and Craig Sundstrom of Amazon Web Services.

Brings together policymakers, corporate leaders, investors, utilities, legal experts, and clean energy innovators to address pressing policy issues facing the clean energy industry. The program is expected to include panels and presentations on current policy and industry trends.

The forum connects energy startups with investors, corporations, and ecosystem partners through structured one-on-one meetings and a startup pitch competition. Its stated areas of focus include electricity; materials and industrial manufacturing; fuels and chemicals; the built environment; resource management; transportation and mobility; enabling technologies; and agriculture and food. Investor participation spans venture and growth equity, family offices, corporate strategic investors, and project finance groups. The event also features technical workshops on topics shaping the energy sector.